Children's Hospital Foundation: Transforming volunteer management through automations

Introduction

Children’s Hospital Foundation (CHF) is here to be the difference every kid deserves. They fund cutting-edge equipment, vital research and on the ground support for kids with all illnesses, injuries and conditions. 

CHF has a selection of volunteer roles designed to bring volunteers face-to-face with precious moments in one of the world’s best paediatric hospitals.  Over one hundred volunteers work across the Queensland Children’s Hospital and Ellen Barron Family Centre – helping parents find their way to an appointment, providing a shoulder of support or entertaining kids. 

CHF currently operates over 8 different volunteer programs across three different locations, including:

• Providing happiness & distraction through child led play 
• Connecting with children through storytelling and reading  
• Providing a shoulder of support for patients and families pre and post operations
• Helping families to navigate their way around Queensland Children’s Hospital 
• Facilitating the orientation to Ellen Barron Family Centre 
• Providing comfort and cuddles to babies  
• Empowering caregivers with knowledge and support throughout their inpatient stay
• Provide administrative support to CHF internal teams

The Challenge

Prior to implementing Rosterfy, CHF was using manual processes including spreadsheets to manage their volunteer lifecycle. This was not only time consuming and inefficient but also failed to deliver an engaging experience for their volunteers. Since adopting Rosterfy, CHF has significantly streamlined their processes with automations now replacing manual processes to enhance efficiency, improve reporting and ensure compliance.

1. Manual management: Volunteer scheduling and management were handled through spreadsheets and not fit for purpose software, resulting in time consuming processes, which left little time for volunteer engagement.
2. Limited reporting and data insights: Limited data insights due to manual processes, prevented the People and Culture team from understanding pain points at both recruitment, onboarding, during their tenure and offboarding. Tracking attendance, compliance requirements and generating reports were labor-intensive and lacked detailed insights into volunteer engagement and performance.
3. Time consuming recruitment and onboarding: Due to the manual recruitment process, a significant amount of staff time was required and did not provide volunteers the best experience coming into the organisation. CHF wanted to provide volunteers with the autonomy to complete the onboarding steps in their own time and ensure appropriate vetting.

To ensure compliance in a highly regulated health environment volunteer onboarding required multiple steps, all of which were manual including the collection of WWCC and background checks. Both time consuming and inefficient, CHF wanted to streamline this process for administrators and volunteers alike.

The Solution

Since implementing Rosterfy, CHF has seen a number of enhancements both for the volunteer and admin teams through features including:

• Customisable status tracking: Through Rosterfy’s comprehensive and customisable features, CHF now collects important information including reasons for not attending a shift. This has been pivotal in understanding the reasons why volunteers aren’t attending (illness versus fourth time they haven’t attended) to ensure that they’re marketing volunteer opportunities to the right contingent of volunteers to help meet their attendance targets. This data will also feed into engagement insights, ensuring that CHF’s volunteer community find reward in the work they do.
• Automated onboarding: Prior to using Rosterfy, CHF were managing their recruitment and onboarding manually. While this was time consuming, it also put a lot of strain on administrators to remember to progress volunteers through the volunteer journey once a key action had been completed. Rosterfy now allows CHF to automate their onboarding from start to finish. From receiving the initial volunteer registration, through to collecting compliance documentation, CHF has a series of communications scheduled to automatically progress their volunteers through their onboarding.
• Optimised reporting: Rosterfy’s reporting capabilities enable CHF to track various metrics, including time taken to onboard, conversion rates, turnover, volunteer hours, program delivery, demographics, and recruitment. They are also now diving deeper into their data to pull reports on birthdays and anniversaries to create meaningful opportunities for personalised engagement through the platform. Reports on birthdays and anniversaries are automatically generated for the reward and recognition program.

The Impact

1. Increased efficiency: Rosterfy’s comprehensive automations have significantly helped CHF reduce manual tasks across recruitment, onboarding, screening, communications and reporting.
2. Improved volunteer tracking: Custom statuses and automated reports provide valuable insights into volunteer engagement and attendance, facilitating better follow-ups and resource planning.
3. Streamlined communication: Automated communications and notifications minimise the risk of missing important steps in the onboarding process and ensure timely updates for volunteers.
4. Greater focus on impact: With Rosterfy alleviating a significant amount of the administrative burden, CHF can concentrate on its core mission of delivering impactful services to patients and families and tracking the meaningful contributions of their volunteers.

 CHF continues to leverage Rosterfy to enhance their volunteer recruitment and management capabilities. The platform’s flexibility and automation features have proven invaluable in optimising operations, ensuring that the foundation can focus on providing support and comfort to families in need.

The successful integration of Rosterfy at CHF exemplifies how technology can transform volunteer management, ensuring that organisations can maximise their impact and support their communities more effectively.